Yehliu Geopark 野柳地质公园

(Venture forth!)

Hi everyone. So, I'm sick. I'm almost well now, but for the last five or six days I've been in various states of sick, so there really hasn't been too much to blog about. But it has been a while, so here's some pictures from a trip I took to Yehliu Geopark.

I woke up early in the morning and met some friends at a cafe. There were five of us in total: Myself, David and Sarah Llach, from Spain and New Zealand respectively (by way of Australia), Josh, from Australia and nowhere else, and Santiago, from Spain by way of China (he's moving to Taiwan permanently so I can post pictures of him). Mason and Harry were both invited, but they didn't want to come.

Artsy introduction shot! From the left, Santiago, Sarah, Josh and David

We took a bus for about an hour and a half to a small port city on the eastern side of Taiwan. It probably has a name, but I am unaware of it.

Josh is taking a picture of the fish we could see through the crystal-clear water. Sadly, his camera is better than mine and I couldn't take their picture.

We walked for a while until we found the entrance to the Geopark itself. Yehliu is, I believe, the remnants of a volcanic eruption on the coast of Taiwan. The lava poured down the hillsides and into the ocean, where it formed some incredibly interesting formations. Then, after a few tens of thousands of years of plate tectonics, the island rose slightly, exposing these awesome rocks for us to see.

On the walk to the park. Some fog rolled in from the ocean...

It's a very popular spot for Taiwanese tourists to go, but is mostly unknown to foreigners,so I'm happy the friends told us about it. Unfortunately, it was very crowded when we first went in...

...but most of those people were part of tour groups, which didn't go very far into the park. So soon, it went from this:

They call this rock the Queen's Head... I guess they didn't like their queen?

To this:

Much better!

First, the path took us down by the ocean.

The sand was mostly made of seashells and coral, and was very sharp but beautiful.

The tides make very interesting patterns in the basaltic rock. It's also littered with thousands of small tide pools.

Beginning to climb higher...

This little inlet is connected to the ocean through a maybe three-inch crevice in the rocks.

Another angle.

Soon, the path began climbing steeply up the mountain.

Aww.

Santiago is easily surprised!

On the way up, we saw one of the best trees ever:

Which, naturally, led to this:

I probably wasn't allowed to do this.

 At the top of the mountain, we had a very interesting experience. At the very top of the path, there was a red pagoda with a granite floor, with an eight-sided table in the middle of it. We were tired, so we sat down in the pagoda and brought out our snacks. The mist was heavy up there, and while we could see the ocean right around us we couldn't see much else.

Looking down from the pagoda. For some reason, I never
took a picture of the pagoda itself... sorry!

 As we sat, chatting and eating off-brand Pringles, we saw three silhouettes approaching us from the path. It was three Chinese people- not unusual, okay, but these were actual Chinese people, from China. (We could tell from the accent- Mainlanders have very strong "R" sounds, whereas Taiwanese people tend to drop their "H"'s.) So we invited them to sit down with us in Chinese, and I think they agreed more out of surprise we could speak Chinese than anything. We got to talking- where are you from, etc- and it came out pretty fast that we five were originally from hugely different areas of the world. They were amazed, and asked how we became friends. We told them about our volunteer work, teaching people about the Bible. For whatever reason, Santiago had actually brought a Bible (in Simplified Chinese, too- perfect for Mainlanders!), so he got it out and showed it to them. They were surprised again, and admitted they didn't know much about the Bible. So for the next hour or so, in a pagoda on top of a misty mountain by the ocean, we studied the Bible with them.

After that awesome break in the day (they took invitations and said they'd check out our website- Santiago knows more what to do next) we took a look at the time and decided to head back. We hit one last interesting place that we hadn't visited yet:

The Moon. Or, pretty close.

It's just solid, flat rock, with really weird patterns in it.

This did bring us back to the populated areas, though...

...which wasn't a bad thing, because here's Santi, preaching like a boss again.

There's a crab in this tide pool!

Yehliu Geopark is one of the more interesting natural parks I've ever visited, and we didn't see it all- there are caves you can dive into, if you're brave! That will have to wait for another time. Also, Mason's sister Kayla left us earlier this week. I totally didn't get to say goodbye- I went to sleep early (sick), before they got home from visiting with friends, and when I woke up she had already gone to the airport. But it's alright, Mason says she didn't say goodbye to him, either, and he actually dropped her off!

This next week- Tuesday, actually- is the final test for this quarter's Chinese lessons. I'm using my sick time well by studying hard- hopefully it goes well! And hopefully, I'll be completely well by then too! :-)